🔗 Share this article

Technology companies and child safety organizations will receive authority to assess whether AI tools can generate child exploitation material under recently introduced UK legislation.

Substantial Increase in AI-Generated Harmful Content

The declaration coincided with findings from a safety watchdog showing that cases of AI-generated child sexual abuse material have increased dramatically in the past year, rising from 199 in 2024 to 426 in 2025.

New Legal Framework

Under the amendments, the authorities will permit designated AI companies and child protection organizations to inspect AI systems – the foundational technology for chatbots and visual AI tools – and verify they have adequate protective measures to stop them from creating images of child exploitation.

"Fundamentally about preventing abuse before it occurs," stated the minister for AI and online safety, adding: "Specialists, under rigorous protocols, can now detect the risk in AI systems promptly."

Tackling Legal Obstacles

The amendments have been introduced because it is against the law to create and possess CSAM, meaning that AI creators and other parties cannot create such images as part of a testing regime. Previously, officials had to delay action until AI-generated CSAM was uploaded online before addressing it.

This legislation is designed to averting that issue by helping to stop the creation of those materials at source.

Legal Structure

The amendments are being added by the government as revisions to the crime and policing bill, which is also establishing a prohibition on owning, producing or sharing AI models designed to create exploitative content.

Practical Impact

This recently, the official visited the London base of a children's helpline and heard a simulated conversation to counsellors involving a account of AI-based exploitation. The call portrayed a adolescent requesting help after being blackmailed using a explicit deepfake of themselves, constructed using AI.

"When I hear about children facing extortion online, it is a source of extreme anger in me and rightful concern amongst parents," he stated.

Concerning Data

A leading online safety foundation stated that instances of AI-generated exploitation material – such as online pages that may contain multiple files – had significantly increased so far this year.

Cases of the most severe content – the gravest form of abuse – increased from 2,621 images or videos to 3,086.

• Female children were predominantly targeted, making up 94% of prohibited AI depictions in 2025
• Depictions of infants to two-year-olds increased from five in 2024 to 92 in 2025

Sector Response

The legislative amendment could "constitute a vital step to ensure AI tools are safe before they are launched," commented the head of the online safety foundation.

"Artificial intelligence systems have enabled so victims can be targeted repeatedly with just a simple actions, providing offenders the ability to create potentially endless amounts of sophisticated, lifelike exploitative content," she continued. "Material which additionally exploits survivors' trauma, and renders children, especially girls, less safe both online and offline."

Support Interaction Data

The children's helpline also released details of counselling interactions where AI has been referenced. AI-related risks mentioned in the conversations include:

• Using AI to rate weight, body and appearance
• AI assistants dissuading young people from talking to safe adults about abuse
• Facing harassment online with AI-generated material
• Digital extortion using AI-manipulated pictures

Between April and September this year, Childline delivered 367 support interactions where AI, chatbots and associated topics were mentioned, four times as many as in the equivalent timeframe last year.

Fifty percent of the mentions of AI in the 2025 interactions were related to psychological wellbeing and wellbeing, encompassing utilizing AI assistants for support and AI therapy applications.